How to Escape the Emotional Eating Cycle and Stop Feeling Lonely

“When you no longer believe that eating will save your life when you feel exhausted or overwhelmed or lonely, you will stop. When you believe in yourself more than you believe in food, you will stop using food as if it were your only chance at not falling apart.” ~Geneen Roth

I used to eat because I was lonely.

Lunch hour at school would last nine billion years. I’d have no one to sit with—I was spotty and mega bossy, and my hobby was copying pages from anthropology books.

Everyone would put a sweater on the chair next to them, so I’d have to sit further away. Then, just as I’d pick up my fork, they’d up and leave anyway! “Oh well,” I’d think, “If I eat slowly I can make my fries last till the bell goes.”

I switched to packed lunches to avoid the dining hall. But I didn’t want to be spotted alone on a windowsill, so I’d eat my sandwiches in a toilet cubicle.

After, I’d feel full, but unsatisfied. And still have time to kill! So I’d go to the dinner hall and buy a meat pie. I felt sad and gross.

The truth was, I didn’t know how to be a friend, let alone make one. I was full of resentment toward other kids.

I acted superior but felt inferior. I was needy, or tried to impress them.

I didn’t think friendship was something people learned—I thought there was something wrong with me. That I’d be this way forever.

I also hated that I couldn’t resist overeating. Since my family was big on brown rice and organic vegetables, I felt guilty for buying junk food.

When I hit my teens, I became body-conscious. I panicked that comfort food would make me fat. I wasn’t! But I thought my thighs were big, and clenched my stomach in all day. All day!

I felt too embarrassed to ask anyone—especially my parents—or help. I thought they’d say I was greedy. Or lecture me about eating crap. Or take me to a doctor—humiliating!

I didn’t know it was called “emotional eating,” but I was pretty sure it was bad. So I kept quiet.

I thought: “I can fix this myself. I just need the self-discipline to eat less!”

Going on improvised diets made things a whole new level of worse: binge eating, bulimia, and feeling utterly obsessed and depressed about food.

It took seven years before I found a way to recover.

I wish I’d known how to deal with lonely emotional eating in the first place, instead of going off on an eating disorder tangent!

So if you’re dealing with a double-whammy of eating and loneliness yourself, here are eight simple steps. They will guide you through solving your emotional eating, and your loneliness, from the inside out.

1. Imagine your life without emotional eating, and shift focus away from guilt and shame.

You’re not greedy. You’re not gross. You’re not ill. You’re just trying to cope with a fear: abandonment.

It’s the emotional fear we’re born with. Outside the tribal circle, a baby would die. The primitive part of your brain thinks, “I’m alone—I’ll starve!”

It’s how you’re wired, so give yourself a break.

If you waste your energy wrestling with guilt and shame over eating, you’ll never tackle the real emotional challenge—loneliness.

The same is true for how you feel about yourself. When we ignore our inner selves, start to believe we are worthless, and an emotional eating crisis is a great way for our heart and soul to grab our attention.

Habits weld to each other! Drinking and smoking. Driving and talking to yourself in a variety of accents. Lonely emotional eating and—?

Break the links.

Don’t just say to yourself “Stop eating toast.” Don’t make any rules about what you eat.

Instead, change how you eat. If you don’t know how you eat, slow down.

Notice what you do at each stage of your emotional eating habit—beforehand, during, after, where, when, with what planning.

Do any part of your habit differently.

Say you eat ten slices of buttered toast and jam in front of the TV each evening. Buy different butter that you don’t like so much. Put the TV (or the toaster) in the cellar. Create an eating area, keep the sofa for relaxing. Shop differently. Go out.

Keep disrupting your habit, and it will eventually dissipate.

Habit change takes patience, and sometimes repeated attempts too.

But break up your habit from enough angles, and you’ll eventually find you’ve replaced it with a way to enjoy food again.

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The way I think of it, addressing loneliness is 88 percent of the solution for emotional eating from loneliness.

When I solved my eating struggles, I spent a couple of years of journaling and becoming aware of my beliefs, thoughts, and feelings. Then, only a month or two of habit change.

I know a couple of years sounds really long! Perhaps it will take less time for you. The point is, this isn’t a quick fix. Quick fixes rarely address the underlying issues.

It’s tempting to rush. To try to skip straight to solving the eating—out-of-control eating feels unbearable and you want it to stop, like, yesterday—but if that hasn’t been working for you, or you’ve even ended up binge eating like I did, give yourself permission and time to go deeper.

Trust me, changing an emotional eating habit is much easier when it’s just eating, and the compulsion part has had your loving attention.